Revised Unit Art

[choppinlt]

As things ramp up for development, I will post some updates I have been doing on the game itself. The unit art continues to evolve, and below are some conceptual examples. There are some units with traditional NATO symbols, but I also played around with inserting the infantry art from Squad Leader counters. As I played around with it I REALLY liked the effect visually, but I realize they are copyrighted. You can see where we are headed, but my artist can offer his own rendition for the units. You will notice that the tank unit has a transparent circle around it. The circle represents the 900m footprint occupied by the tank battalion. Units with a 700m footprint will also see a circle. All units with a 500m footprint are the counter only, as it covers 500m. Company sized units with a 300m footprint are shown as smaller counters that cover 300m (see C/175).

FYI the 3/177 counter with 3 white blocks and black triangle is a battlegroup of 3 infantry companies and an attached company of tanks.

My UK unit below brings me to a question. My naming convention works great for about everyone else EXCEPT the Brits. So the Brigades contain different battalions from different regiments!!! So the W was to designate 2nd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment assigned to the 185th Brigade...anyone got a better way to annotate the Brit naming conventions?

[choppinlt]

More revisions. Feel free to comment and give your thoughts and suggestions...
You will see the first set of pics are for the all the units contained in the US 9th ID and 4th AD. The Regiment and Brigade HQ units are blank because I have not settled on a graphic for that yet. Additionally you will notice that there are a group of symbols in the bottom middle. The echelon types with different colors denote differing cohesion levels. The "lights" denote the overall health/capability of the unit with all factors considered (casualties, operational equipment, fatigue, etc). The small symbols on the left side of the group are special indicators to better define units and to use for battlegroups.




This picture is primarily several different divisions. One special note, the tank battalion on the far right shows the new battlegroup concept art. What you see is the 1/66/B tank battalion with 3 companies of armored infantry attached (the 3 black squares on the left).

[A Canadian Cat]

Looking good. Quick question what are you plans for modding or skinning by customers? I am curious if any of those sub graphics will be changeable by players. For me I's like to tweak the central image from a tank to a tactical symbol instead (e.g. NATO symbols) but I can think that others might want to provide alternate art for various divisions or for the lights etc.

[choppinlt]

Generally speaking, I definitely want to allow for modding/skinning by customers. Allowing the "sub graphics" to be tweaked is my full intent. The development side will have final say on how this will work though, but that is my intent for reasons you suggest. Some will like a more visual representative appearance vs symbols, and vice versa. Frankly I'm OK with allowing complete unit re-skinning. Again the developer will have final say as to what extent the graphics can be modified.

Speaking of tweaks, I am open to suggestions on what I am showing.